The present invention relates to a cop delivery system for conveying and supplying cops, coming from the spinning step, to a winder of the subsequent step.
Ordinarily, cops coming from the spinning step are once stored in a magazine box of a winder, and one cop is taken out from the magazine upon demand of a winding unit and supplied to said winding unit. Conventional winders are roughly divided into two types. In a winder of one type, a plurality of units are arranged on a circular or oval course and circulated along this course, and in a winder of the other type, a plurality of units are arranged along a line stationarily. In the winder of the circulation type, many cops are stored in a magazine located at a special position, and this circulation operation is temporarily stopped when a cop-requiring unit arrives at the position of the magazine and one cop is supplied to this unit from the magazine.
In a winder of the stationary unit type, each of many winding units arranged stationarily comprises a magazine unit for storing a plurality of cops therein, and when a certain unit requires a cop, one cop is taken out from the magazine of said unit and is supplied to said unit.
In each of the winders of the above two types, an operation of supplying cops to the magazine is necesaary, and whether this operation is performed by an operator or is automatically performed, it is indispensable that cops coming from the spinning step should be delivered to the vicinity of the magazine.
Various sevices have been proposed as means for conveying cops doffed from a spinning frame to a winder, and as the delivery method, there have been adopted (a) a method in which a number of cops are stored in a cop box and they are delivered by an operator or by delivery means such as a conveyor or crane, (b) a method in which automatic cop supply devices, which are attached to a spinning frame and a winder, are connected to each other through a conveyor and cops are conveyed while they are laid on the conveyor, and (c) a method in which pegs are secured to the above conveyor and cops are conveyed while they are vertically inserted on the pegs.
All of these methods, however, are defective in that the conveying operation is laborious and various installations are necessary. Furthermore, when cops are conveyed while they are packed in a box, during the conveying operation, fluffs are formed on the surfaces of cops or wound yarn layers are broken, and yarn ends are entangled to render the pick finding operation difficult.
When cops are conveyed in the state where they are inserted on pegs arranged on a conveyor, separation of the cops from the pegs is necessary for charging them into the automatic cop supply device, and if it is intended to perform this operation automatically, it is necessary to dispose a machine hand for separating cops from the pegs. Moreover, in this case, there is a risk of formation of fluffs, breakage of wound yarn layers or damage of yarns because of yarn layers on the cops are contacted with one another.